Solidata K5 SLC Indilinx

John24

John24

John24

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Joined
25 Oct 2007
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32GB
SLC NAND flash memory
Max read speed: 250MB/sec
Max write speed: 200MB/sec
Indilinx controller - 1819 firmware with 'garbage collection' (Win 7 trim/wiper supported)
Max IOPS: 8,000/6,000 (Read/Write)
2,000,000 Hours MTBF
3 year warranty

£133 for a 32GB Indilinx SLC drive is very reasonable. The 64GB version is only £10 more than the Crucial M225 aswell.
 
The label on the drive says 240MB/s read and 170MB/s write, I'd guess the higher figures are for the bigger drives.

I think someone has made a mistake with the pricing there - as these are SLC drives! The only other place I've seen this has been a 32GB at about £220 and £420 for a 64GB.
 
Yep, it's a great price.

Probably on old pic, here are the current speeds:

16GB - 200/120 MB/s
32GB - 240/190 MB/s
64/128GB - 250/200 MB/s
 
Completely pointless buying SLC though, realistically as of the last year or two very little performance advantage, in terms of longevity of the drive. Most people are expecting MLC's to be lasting at least a few years, most people will probably find they last 5 or even 10 years. Fact is with the flash chips getting smaller and higher density we'll have drives that are quite literally 4 times as fast at 1/4 of the price and 5 times the capacity in only a couple years.

Seem's absurd to pay more now for a drive you'll likely replace within 2 years at most.

Yes the 64gb is only £10 more than the Crucials current pricing, which is nuts. But at Crucials initial circa £100 pricing when stock was available, the 64gb in SLC seems a silly increase in cost.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Completely pointless buying SLC though, realistically as of the last year or two very little performance advantage, in terms of longevity of the drive. Most people are expecting MLC's to be lasting at least a few years, most people will probably find they last 5 or even 10 years. Fact is with the flash chips getting smaller and higher density we'll have drives that are quite literally 4 times as fast at 1/4 of the price and 5 times the capacity in only a couple years.

Seem's absurd to pay more now for a drive you'll likely replace within 2 years at most.

Yes the 64gb is only £10 more than the Crucials current pricing, which is nuts. But at Crucials initial circa £100 pricing when stock was available, the 64gb in SLC seems a silly increase in cost.
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Tend to agree with most of this, but I'm not as optimistic about the timescales we'll see speed, capacity and price get to the levels you mention. It seems a lot of the companies haven't been making lots out of the current generations, so will eventually want to recoup the R&D.

And I understand there's only a finite limit to how small they can shrink the NAND cells before data integrity would become an issue. I don't think that's far off, seem to recall being about 20nm and some are at 32 and 34nm now.

If that happens then I can see newer technologies moving in, but it'll be new technology again, for which we'll be expected to pay a premium.

I hope you're right, but I can see us getting gouged for a few more years yet, either due to the technology or due to the fact they want to make some money out of is.
 
There only seems to be one place doing these and the price of the 64Gb is at £209.30inc vat. I'm assuming the price has increased since this thread started, or the price of Crucial 64Gb has dropped :)
 
ChileanLlama said:
Tend to agree with most of this, but I'm not as optimistic about the timescales we'll see speed, capacity and price get to the levels you mention. It seems a lot of the companies haven't been making lots out of the current generations, so will eventually want to recoup the R&D.

And I understand there's only a finite limit to how small they can shrink the NAND cells before data integrity would become an issue. I don't think that's far off, seem to recall being about 20nm and some are at 32 and 34nm now.

If that happens then I can see newer technologies moving in, but it'll be new technology again, for which we'll be expected to pay a premium.

I hope you're right, but I can see us getting gouged for a few more years yet, either due to the technology or due to the fact they want to make some money out of is.
Click to expand...

Probably the most interesting thing will be Samsung's statement of their intention to become as big a manufacturer of chips as TSMC, which will probably include a lot of memory as thats where they really have a strong base with manufacturing chips. Likewise GloFO are starting to get into the market big time and with Nand flash being a massive growth market, having a bunch of small fabs over in singapore they want to stick new process tech in and needing something to produce there I think we could easily see GloFo get in on the game. Meaning far more competition for Nand flash. I think also Crucials £100 launch pricing was the way things were heading, it seems the supply as caused prices to increase.

That supply issue seems to be down to waiting for proper mass production of the smaller chips to kick in which I guess they expected the older chips to last till, but massive demand meant they sold quicker than expected, and delays for the newer chips production and you have current pricing.

If we end up with 3/4 major world players all getting into massive competition with this next set of chips and we'll see prices drop a lot.

AFAIK the current tech is 34nm(well the new/current, waiting for bigger production of it now). A company has just made its first 16nm sram chips(not the same, but an indication of where it will go). We've got 5-6 years probably before lack of smaller processes suitable becomes an issue.
 
[timko];15562340 said:
There only seems to be one place doing these and the price of the 64Gb is at £209.30inc vat. I'm assuming the price has increased since this thread started, or the price of Crucial 64Gb has dropped :)
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Yeah the 64GB price has gone up £30.. the 32GB price is still the same though.

Still the cheapest SLC's I've seen and they should be good performers too.

I've just worn out my SLC drive after 18 months solid usage (no pun intended :)) so would be very wary going MLC.
 
John, that sounds like very heavy, above standard usage, a poor drive or bad luck.

How do you know it was worn out - and all the cells at once? Don't you have a MTRON Mobi 3000? Don't these have an advertised lifespan of over 140 years at average 50GB writes per day. I can't imagine you've got anywhere near that in 18 months! So something else seems to be at play other than you've just worn it out. Would you care to elaborate on what's happened?

SLCs and even MLCs have been around for over 18 months now, so if they were wearing out so quickly under normal conditions there would be a lot of incidents being reported, something I've not seen.

But I'm interested to learn more about what's happened to your drive :)
 
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